The organization said it would announce plans on Monday for a $1 million prize to the “first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012.”

The idea of getting the next Chicken McNugget out of a test tube is not new. For several years, scientists have worked to develop technologies to grow tissue cultures that could be consumed like meat without the expense of land or feed and the disease potential of real meat. An international symposium on the topic was held this month in Norway. The tissue, once grown, could be shaped and given texture with the kinds of additives and structural agents that are now used to give products like soy burgers a more meaty texture.

Nasty! The real question is, would anybody actually want to eat meat the comes out of a test tube? If you really want fake meat, get it here. The fried chicken patties taste damn good, so does the fake mutton. The real question is, if you really are a vegetarian for ethical reasons, wouldn’t just the idea of eating flesh (real or fake) gross you out? I like fake meat just for the novelty and artifice of it all, but I will gladly concede that fake meat isn’t necessarily healthier for me, since it’s still a heavily processed food product, no different from Cool Whip or cheese in a can.